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Rusty Brown (Pantheon Graphic Library) Hardcover – Illustrated, September 24, 2019

by Chris Ware (Author)

4.8 819 ratings

Part of: Pantheon Graphic Library

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A major graphic novel event more than 18 years in progress: part one of the ongoing bifurcated masterwork from the brilliant and beloved author of Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth and Building Stories.

Rusty Brown is a fully interactive, full-color articulation of the time-space interrelationships of three complete consciousnesses in the first half of a single midwestern American day and the tiny piece of human grit about which they involuntarily orbit. A sprawling, special snowflake accumulation of the biggest themes and the smallest moments of life, Rusty Brown literately and literally aims at nothing less than the coalescence of one half of all of existence into a single museum-quality picture story, expertly arranged to present the most convincingly ineffable and empathetic illusion of experience for both life-curious readers and traditional fans of standard reality. From childhood to old age, no frozen plotline is left unthawed in the entangled stories of a child who awakens without superpowers, a teen who matures into a paternal despot, a father who stores his emotional regrets on the surface of Mars and a late-middle-aged woman who seeks the love of only one other person on planet Earth.

Part of series

Pantheon Graphic Library
Print length

356 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Pantheon
Publication date

September 24, 2019
Dimensions

9.74 x 1.91 x 7.28 inches
ISBN-10

0375424326
ISBN-13

978-0375424328
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From the Publisher


	Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth	Rusty Brown	Building Stories

Customer Reviews	529	819	582
Price	$16.49	$19.29	$49.18
	This first book from Chicago author Chris Ware is a pleasantly-decorated view at a lonely and emotionally-impaired "everyman", who is provided, at age 36, the opportunity to meet his father for the first time.	A fully interactive, full-color articulation of the time-space interrelationships of three complete consciousnesses in the first half of a single midwestern American day and the tiny piece of human grit about which they involuntarily orbit.	A wholly inventive and interactive storytelling experience—featuring 14 distinctively discrete books, booklets, magazines, newspapers, and pamphlets—from the award-winning author of Jimmy Corrigan.

Editorial Reviews

Review

***FINALIST FOR THE 2020 PEN/JEAN STEIN BOOK AWARD***
***A NEW YORK TIMES 100 NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR ***
***A NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR***
***ONE OF LIT HUB'S MOST HIGHLY ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2019***

“Feverishly inventive and intimately told, drawn with empathy, architectural rigor and a spooky sense of a divine eye . . . [Rusty Brown] is the most audacious and inspiring fiction I’ve read this year.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Ware’s trademark excruciating beauty and meticulously crafted, gloriously intricate despair.”—Los Angeles Review of Books

“Nobody chronicles lives of quiet desperation with the exacting meticulousness of Chris Ware. His singular style provides him, and us, with direct access to the primal emotions we collectively repress. . . Precision that will take your breath away.”—NPR (Best Books of the Year)

“Nearly two decades in the making, Ware’s latest book, Rusty Brown . . . is shaping up to be Ware’s epic, a kind of comic-book Ulysses full of unreliable narrators and occasional forays into stream of consciousness. Take that, Stan Lee.”—Esquire

“Chris Ware’s design sensibility is masterfully claustrophobic . . . the ambition of his storytelling, the scope of his vision, and his absolute control over his medium are astonishing. A generational achievement, presented in a gorgeous edition.”—Forbes

“Remarkable . . . Masterfully illustrated, brilliantly designed, and bursting with compassion . . . This is without a doubt one of the most exciting releases of the year.”—Library Journal (starred Editor’s Pick)

“Showcase[s] Ware’s sublime artistic vision, blending his trademark drawings with a lyrical exploration of weighty themes.”—The Washington Post

“Awe-inspiring . . . A treasure trove of insight and invention . . . Ware’s sensibility is gloriously mixed . . . Rusty Brown is a human document of rare richness – infinitely sad, intimately attuned to desolation and disappointment, but never closed to the possibility of a breakthrough . . . Impassioned and ineffable.”—The Guardian

“Chris Ware’s Rusty Brown depicts life the way it is: jam packed with details, the closer you look the ever more there is.” — Bookworm

“He is one of the most celebrated living cartoonists . . . His artistry is surgically precise, his lettering a finely-calibrated wonder . . . Ware’s prose is bleak but beautiful, and often grapples with devastatingly relatable themes . . . Exceptional . . . As a whole, Rusty Brown is going to be spectacular, but for now, this first volume is a great and promising start.”—Run Spot Run

“Ware’s dazzling geometric art has never been better. Ware again displays his virtuosic ability to locate the extraordinary within the ordinary, elevating normal lives to something profound, unforgettable, and true.”—Publisher’s Weekly (Holiday Gift Guide)

“Another sprawling and adventurous novel that, like all of his work, is lonesome, rueful, uncertain about human connection, yet also empathetic, dazzling—as committed to depicting the overlooked and anonymous as it is innovative.”—Chicago Tribune

“Ware is a master of finding the sublime in the mundane . . . a deep exploration of the essence of being human. You’ll admire the extraordinary artwork and attention to such details, but you’ll also be moved to your core by the writing.”—New City

“Ware is well known for his expansive, introspective, depth-plumbing works of graphic fiction, and his latest, featuring a series of interconnected, decade-spanning narratives spiraling outward from an Omaha school, is no different . . . There are only brief moments of warmth and affection, but the wider picture, depicting a complex matrix of aching loneliness; long-simmering, acidic resentment; and a desperation for human connection and fulfillment, is rich with pathos and powerfully stirring.”—Booklist (starred)

“Rusty Brown is a towering achievement, a hefty, hardback graphic novel that examines, in meticulous and sumptuous detail, the lives of six intertwined characters on a single wintry day in an anonymous Midwestern town . . . There is an underlying melancholy to many of the characters’ lives, but with flickers of hope and redemption threaded through the narrative and the beautiful, precise illustrations . . . A powerful and sometimes heartbreaking book.”—AV Club THE BIG ISSUE

“Ware delivers an astounding graphic novel about nothing less than the nature of life and time as it charts the intersecting lives of characters that revolve around an Omaha, Neb., parochial school in the 1970s . . . Ware again displays his virtuosic ability to locate the extraordinary within the ordinary, elevating seemingly normal lives into something profound, unforgettable, and true.”—Publishers Weekly (starred)

“Ware fans rejoice . . . Curious and compelling . . . As with Ware's other works of graphic art, the narrative arc wobbles into backstory and tangent: Each page is a bustle of small and large frames, sometimes telling several stories at once in the way that things buzz around us all the time, demanding notice . . . a beguiling masterwork of visual storytelling from the George Herriman of his time.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred)

“There's little in Chris Ware's comics that goes unexplored; sadness, disappointment, joy, love, among others are all represented . . . Ware's talent as a cartoon storyteller is never in question, regardless of subject matter, but Rusty Brown still stands out as among his most affecting stories . . . Yet another unmissable Chris Ware release.”—Pop Matters

“Intimate and feverishly inventive, it follows multiple characters to reveal moments large and small . . . Ware’s true gift is not the density of his books but in how he compels us to feel amid such bounty.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Emotionally and visually, Ware’s books are often sprawling and messy, but they are never unclear. His panels, small and detailed, are often part of meticulously designed pages, some of which unfold into larger configurations. And yet, there’s a spontaneity to Ware’s work . . . To work through a Chris Ware graphic novel is, in a way, to work through life—its joys, disappointments, exhilarations, and uncertainties.”—The Millions

About the Author

CHRIS WARE is widely acknowledged to be the most gifted and beloved cartoonist of his generation by both his mother and fourteen-year-old daughter. His Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth won the Guardian First Book Award and was listed as one of the 100 Best Books of the Decade by The Times (London) in 2009. Building Stories was named a Top Ten Fiction Book of the Year in 2012 by both The New York Times and Time magazine. Ware is an irregular contributor to The New Yorker, and his original drawings have been exhibited at the Whitney Biennial, in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and in piles behind his worktable in Oak Park, Illinois. In 2016 he was featured in the PBS documentary series Art 21: Art in the 21st Century, and in 2017 an eponymous monograph of his work was published by Rizzoli.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Pantheon; Illustrated edition (September 24, 2019)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 356 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0375424326
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0375424328
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.58 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 9.74 x 1.91 x 7.28 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #95,708 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #17 in Dystopian Graphic Novels
- #122 in Literary Graphic Novels (Books)
- #803 in Science Fiction Manga (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.8 819 ratings

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Chris Ware

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Chris Ware is the author of "Jimmy Corrigan — the Smartest Kid on Earth" and "Building Stories," which was chosen as a Top Ten Fiction Book by both The New York Times and Time Magazine in 2012. A regular contributor of graphic fiction and over thirty covers to The New Yorker, his work has been exhibited at the MoCa Los Angeles, the MCA Chicago and the Whitney Museum of American Art as well as in regular exhibitions at the Adam Baumgold Gallery in New York and Galerie Martel in Paris. The PBS program "Art in the 21st Century" featured his work in their 2016 season, an eponymous monograph of his work was released by Rizzoli in 2017 and "Rusty Brown Part I" was published in late 2019 and selected as one the Best 100 Books of the Year by the New York Times. A solo retrospective of his work was presented at the Centre Pompidou in 2022, the Cartoonmuseum in Basel, Switzerland in 2023, the International Museum of Comic Art in Pordenone, Italy in 2024 and will continue to appear in Europe through 2025. The third and final facsimile volume of his unjustifiable, indefensible and fortunately recyclable sketchbooks will be published in October, 2024.

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4.8 out of 5

819 global ratings

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Joe Leonard

Incredible. An important work of Art, Sure to be a collectors item.

Reviewed in the United States on March 8, 2024

Verified Purchase

Incredible. Innovative. Breathtakingly beautiful. An important work of Art, Sure to be a collectors item.
At $20 there is no excuse for not buying this if you are interested in art or middle American culture from 1950 to 2020.
I don't write product reviews. I feel obligated to post.
I am basically a Vulcan, but this book was so authentic and so tragic I almost got misty more than once.
Don't take my word for it. Read the reviews in the Guardian or the New York Times.

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David Swan

Amazing Collection

Reviewed in the United States on October 21, 2019

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I own several of Chris Ware’s Acme Novelty Library books, but it felt like I was getting into the middle of a soap opera and his older books had jumped in price so I didn’t stick with it. This is not the first compilation of ANL but it’s the first one I’ve purchased and I’m really glad I did. Although the book is titled Rusty Brown, his story only occupies something less than a third of the book. The book is basically divided in five sections with Rusty being the first. What’s interesting is that all of the characters have some tangential relationship to each other and sometimes it took me awhile to recognize that the character who is the focus of the current story is one I had already seen.

Before I get into the various section of the book, I want to talk about Chris Ware’s art because I find it fascinating. I took several years of graphic design in college and this is exactly what I would expect artwork to look like if it came from a graphic design major. Everything is precise and meticulous with perfectly straight edges and flawless curves. It’s so interesting how the meticulousness of the art contrasts with the very emotional and bleak stories. Sometimes an artist and writer don’t mesh, and the art feels inappropriate but since Ware is both the writer and artist, this is his intended vision. Ware also uses a lot of colors, but they’re kept muted for the somber tone.

In many ways, the sterility of Ware’s artwork adds to the starkness of the world he has created. A page might have several large frames, or a page could be filled with frames no more than a half inch in size. As someone whose eyes have seen better days, I required a magnifying glass to read a significant amount of the book even while wearing my reading glasses. Ware also includes some gorgeous outdoor images of overcast winter days. I grew up in Northeast Ohio and can definitely identify with these kinds of days and Ware captures them perfectly. These images are created to evoke a mood and work perfectly. The one thing I will say about Chris Ware’s art is it’s unmistakable and I don’t know anyone producing anything like it.

Rusty Brown is a very shy and awkward seven-year-old who carries around a Supergirl doll and I would speculate lies somewhere on the autistic scale. We are also introduced to Chalky White, who seems cut from the same cloth, and his sister, who appears to be less of an autistic but suffers from depression. I believe the entire story takes place in a single day and although we meet many other characters not a single one seems happy. It may all sound unappealing but it’s a pretty compelling story and people who suffer from depression would likely relate.

Next, is a sci-fi story which really didn’t make much sense until the ending which led right into a story about Rusty’s dad when he was a young man. Rusty’s dad is a bit weird and creepy, to say the least, but we already knew that from the Rusty story. He’s a teacher at Rusty’s school and has a propensity to leer at young schoolgirls. The story that follows recounts the entire life of Jordan Lint, birth to death. Jordan was a boy who bullied Rusty Brown and he’s the most unpleasant character in the entire book. We do see how he is a product of his environment, but this is not a story of redemption. None of these stories are cheerful but they are all unforgettable.
The final story is about Joanne Cole, a black schoolteacher at Rusty’s very white school. She is easily the most likable and sympathetic character in the book although she definitely has her own issues including some constant low level racism that she deals with on a daily basis. She has arguably the only upbeat ending in the book so it was a nice way to close things out.

I compared the physical size of Chalky Brown to one of my Acme Novelty Library books and they have the exact same height and width. I also couldn’t detect any difference in page or image quality when comparing the same pages. I will say that there is 10 pages of material in my ANL book that isn’t in Chalky Brown because they are unrelated to the story. If you think you’re getting everything in the ANL books, you aren’t. I’m really glad I picked this book up and I definitely plan on getting at least one more compilation by Chris Ware. These stories may not brighten your day, but they will likely stay with you long after you’re done reading. I definitely plan on reading this book at least once more.

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Devron Grant

Rusty Brown captures the beauty in life's pain

Reviewed in the United States on October 4, 2019

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Chris Ware has done it again. This is an amazing graphical novel. I wish it was offered in digital form because it would make it easier to read repeatedly on my iPad.

Without giving anything away, Chris illustrates the stories of, I believe, four main characters. The characters are all incredibly human and flawed but somehow even for the most flawed of characters, Chris captures the essence of what led to their pain. These aren't easy stories to read. There is so much pain and despair here and almost all of it unresolved. But I think that's what I love about his work. It's genuine and it makes you feel something. It makes you want to go out and live a better life.

I have purchased just about all of the Acme Library books and I love Jimmy Corrigan. I think Jimmy Corrigan is still my favorite book because it feels like a much more complete journey. But books like Rusty Brown are significantly more challenging and they show an evolution in Chris's work.

My criticisms of the book are minor. As mentioned, I'd love to read this on an iPad. There are several places where the detail in the images is so rich but so small and I've used my phone to take a photo and tried to zoom in to make out the very small text in some places. I'm sure this is done for effect. The text is small because it's background chatter. Or in some cases it's probably not meant to be read. But nonetheless, I'd like to zoom in.

Also the book is huge and while I'd read anything Chris writes, making it more portable via digital option world be great.

I do have one other criticism content-wise. Chris trusts his readers. There are times when he leaves clues about a major event in a character's life and doesn't expressly tell us what happened. But there were places where I would have loved a bit more exposition. There are a few characters where the story ends somewhat abruptly and I was sure that he was going to get back to them, but he never did.

Because the book doesn't have page numbers and because of the material that the pages are made from, it's sometimes hard to tell if maybe you skipped a page that was stuck together with another page. I didn't want to miss anything and occasionally this led to a bit of frustration but a very small annoyance.

The way the book ends gives us the impression that the story isn't over. But I know how long these books must be to plan and write and illustrate. But they are food for our soul and I can't wait to read the next one.

12 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Terrific novel

Reviewed in Canada on September 28, 2023

Verified Purchase

Terrific graphic novel at an excellent price.

Douglas Remillard

You want this.

Reviewed in France on April 28, 2024

Verified Purchase

You never forget your first graphic novel (especially if it was after you were 40).

JS

Accurate

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 8, 2023

Verified Purchase

This is an amazing book, but it is important to know that the description of this as a used was accurate. It arrived quickly and safely.

Anderson Lima Oliveira

Quando o aluno já superou ao mestre e a si mesmo

Reviewed in Brazil on September 22, 2020

Verified Purchase

Comecei a ler tem poucos dias e já me vejo totalmente preso, fascinado pela história, pelo traço e pela inovação que Chris Ware trouxe para os quadrinhos. Tudo bem, sabemos quais são suas influências. Richard McGuire provavelmente é a maior nesse quesito... Porém, Chris Ware foi além, ele supera e se supera. Em Rusty Brown é isso que acontece, uma história melancólica, cheia de personagens perdedores e/ou com problemas do passado ainda nada resolvidos... Enfim, uma obra-prima que apenas Chris Ware poderia ter realizado.

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Indranil Modak

Chris Ware's another masterpiece in a splendid hardcover edition. Just LOVED it ❤

Reviewed in India on May 21, 2021

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The book contains vivid color palette and realistic, meticulous details; deals with social issues, depression and loneliness.